Beyond Maria: Coming Together to Help Rebuild Puerto Rico

Luis Mendez and Waleska Sallaberry, the publishers of Natural Awakenings Puerto Rico (PR) edition for the past 15 years, have a simple request: “Please help us rebuild.”

Mendez and Sallabery are remarkable community leaders, having not only launched what is now PR’s number one health and wellness publication, but also having originated and managed the most important annual health and wellness expo in PR and the Caribbean, created a natural health network of discounted services with more than 1,000 providers and 250,000 members and founded an alternative eco-school to serve PR’s western coast.

They have been inspirational to their readers and clients, but also to other publishers in the Natural Awakenings family, who have benefited from their guidance, leadership and vision for the magazine. Publishers have created a GoFundMe account to support their efforts to rebuild PR’s holistic health and wellness community at a time when healing services are so desperately needed.

Mendez and Sallaberry will be trustees of this fund and will disseminate the proceeds to the people and organizations in PR at their discretion. Donations will help not just one family, but an entire networked family of businesses and organizations that are part of the backbone of PR.

“I’m inspired by the ways different publishers are responding to this need in our publishing family,” says Natural Awakenings Publishing Corporation CEO Sharon Bruckman. “This campaign allows us to reach out to our readers, as well, and offer them a way to directly affect the natural health community in Puerto Rico, allowing for continued sustenance even after Puerto Rico cycles out of the news in the weeks and months to come.”